Avera Medical Minute: Supporting your medical needs with home health care

SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (Dakota News Now) - Having access to health care at your home can make a big difference when recovering from a major illness or after a hospitalization or surgery. Home health care is one option to help with those ongoing needs. In this Avera Medical Minute, hear from one patient who is feeling much stronger after utilizing home health care.

Physical therapy exercises are getting easier each day for Monte Solma.

To make sure he is staying on track, Morgan Mueller has been stopping by weekly. She is a physical therapist with Avera@Home, which offers home health care for patients like Monte.

“Home health care has a lot of opportunity for people to stay within their home,” said physical therapist, Morgan Mueller, DPT, MTC. “We have nursing, physical therapy, occupational therapy, speech therapy, we have a wonderful team in the office.”

Monte first started using this service earlier this year to help gain his strength back while battling cancer.

“I was doing chemo, did three rounds of chemo and after each round of chemo I had a setback,” said Avera patient, Monte Solma. “I had a home health care nurse, physical therapy and occupational therapy come to my house and instructed me what I needed to do and work on and how I can get better.”

Morgan has been coming to his home about one to two times a week for physical therapy sessions. So what does a typical appointment look like for Monte?

“I come up and we sit down and kind of regroup from our last visit, find out how is your pain, are there things that were difficult between sessions, what are you feeling like you need to do today to get better, what are your goals, has anything changed, do you have any new appointments that we need to work on, any questions or concerns,” said Mueller.

Then they move into different exercises, aimed at helping Monte get stronger.

“We are working on improving his balance and his overall functional mobility so practicing getting in and out of the chair multiple times to make sure that we are using good body mechanics and doing exercises at the sink to strengthen not only our legs, but our core and overall body so we can return to that independent life that he had before,” said Mueller.

“On nice days we will go for a walk, first couple times I can’t make it around the block, we live on a larger block, maybe walk to the corner and back, take a little break and then have leg exercises to do,” said Solma.

And while Monte has had setbacks throughout his cancer journey, he’s remained motivated.

“I improved great deals, as long as I was doing my exercises she set up, you could see the improvement in the confidence I had in myself,” said Solma.

“Somebody like Monte, who is a younger person, who was working and completely independent before all of this happened, and I think this is a patient population that often gets missed and are unaware of the services we are able to offer within their home,” said Mueller. “Our goal with home health care is to meet our patients where they are and to ensure that we are all working for the common good of the patient to stay home, to be as independent functional as possible.”

Monte says one of his next big goals is to get back out on the golf course. If you’d like to learn more about home health care options, head to avera.org/medicalminute.